Take your inspiration from Stephen King’s new novel and send in your creative writing on the theme of UNDER THE DOME. Hodder & Stoughton aew offering participants the opportunity to have their work read by one of the world’s favourite storytellers, and to receive a signed copy of UNDER THE DOME. If you’re an aspiring author or poet, a Stephen King fan, or just inspired by the theme, then this competition is for you. Submit your original piece, of no more than 2,000 words, below before 15th December 2009. The winner will be announced on 20th January 2010. Use the extracts as inspiration or submit whatever UNDER THE DOME conjures up in your imagination.

Stephen King and his UK editor will choose a winner based on the readability of their entry and the quality of their writing.

Celebrated storyteller Stephen King returns to his roots in this tour de force featuring more than 100 characters – some heroic, some diabolical – and a supernatural element as baffling and chilling as any he's ever conjured.

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mills, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener's hand is severed as “the Dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when – or if – it will go away.

With some of the most spectacularly sinister characters King has ever imagined and a driving plot, UNDER THE DOME is Stephen King at his epic best. This book will thrill every reader who's ever loved a novel by King.